Robert Arp

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Robert Arp (born March 20, 1970) is an American philosopher known for his work in ethics, modern philosophy, ontology, philosophy of biology, cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, religious studies, and philosophy and popular culture. He currently works as an adjunct professor teaching philosophy courses in the classroom and online at numerous schools in the Kansas City, Missouri area and other areas of the United States. Arp's paper in International Philosophical Quarterly titled "Vindicating Kant's Morality" offers a defense of Immanuel Kant's position against those who would claim that Kant's moral position lacks a motivational component, ignores the spiritual dimensions of morality espoused by a virtue-based ethics, overemphasizes the principle of autonomy in neglecting the communal context of morality, and lacks a theological foundation. In "The Double Life of Justice and Injustice in Thrasymachus' Account," published in Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek Political Thought (1999, 16:1-2, 17-29), Arp argues that Thrasymachus, the primary interlocutor of Socrates in Book I of Plato's Republic, actually defines three types of people in a society: the tyrant, the citizens of the society that the tyrant exploits, and the person who wants to be the tyrant and who's clever enough not to be exploited by the tyrant. His argument is unique in the 70-year history of scholarship in this area, since most commentators recognize merely the tyrant and the citizens exploited by the tyrant. By identifying this third type of person, Arp is able to show that Thrasymachus' three statements regarding justice in Republic I are consistent with one another, namely: justice is (1) "nothing other than the advantage of the stronger" (338c); justice is (2) obeying the laws of the ruler(s) (339b); justice is (3) "really someone else's good, the advantage of the man who is stronger and rules" (343c). With Arthur Caplan, Arp edited Contemporary Debates in Bioethics[15] through John Wiley & Sons, containing new papers written by experts in bioethics and applied ethics such as Don Marquis, Tom Beauchamp, Mark Cherry, William J. Winslade, Jane Maienschein, Edwin Black, Richard Arneson, and others.